


Et in Arcadia Ego

by TotallyJeannius



Series: Tangled up in knots someone else tied [6]
Category: Resurrection (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22880662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TotallyJeannius/pseuds/TotallyJeannius
Summary: A new year brings new revelations for the Langston family, a few leaps of faith for every couple, and the return of Arcadia’s prodigal son.
Relationships: Margaret Langston/Brian Addison
Series: Tangled up in knots someone else tied [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/225821
Comments: 24
Kudos: 8





	Et in Arcadia Ego

**Author's Note:**

> This work will be posted in installments throughout the year, and new songs will be added to the playlist in the end notes as the story progresses. Stay safe and stay tuned!

> I'm underneath your window now—it's long after the birds have gone to roost  
>  And I'm not sure if I'm singing for the love of it or for the love of you  
>  But I've flown a long way, honey  
>  Hear my confession, then I'll go  
>  I'd rather be the one who loves than to be loved and never even know
> 
> —Josh Ritter, "Snow Is Gone"

The doorbell and the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange ring at almost the exact same moment on that chilly Friday afternoon in early January. Setting his laptop and his reading glasses down on the coffee table, Brian finishes off the last of his afternoon cup of Earl Grey and shuts off the TV. He's in a convivial mood when he opens the front door, fully expecting to find Alex dropping off Jacob's birthday present on her way back into town from Chicago; instead, he's surprised to find that it's a different young woman standing on his front porch. Her long hair is tied in a smooth, high ponytail and her expression is somewhat pensive. She's nervously chewing on her bottom lip, making it clear to him that there is something weighing heavily on Dr. Maggie Langston's mind.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Addison," she begins, sounding a little flustered as she stuffs her fidgeting hands into the slash pockets of her oversized black pea coat. "Is my grandma—I mean, is Margaret here?"

He can't help a genuinely warm smile from forming on his lips. Not only because he knows how much it would mean to Margaret to know that Maggie is gradually growing more comfortable with her grandmother's presence in her life, but also because there are times when the physical resemblance between grandmother and granddaughter nearly stops him dead in his tracks—that same slender build and thick brown hair, those arresting blue eyes that are difficult to miss. But for Brian, what sets his heart ablaze is their million-watt smiles, which never fail to transform their elegant features into something uniquely touched by the divine.

"No, I'm sorry, she's not in at the moment," he answers, taking his phone out of his pocket to check the time and for any missed text messages from Margaret. "She called maybe about an hour ago, saying she was going to swing by the grocery store on her way home from work this afternoon. She should be back any minute now."

He's just invited Maggie to come inside and is in the middle of asking her whether she'd like anything to drink while she waits when Margaret's red Cadillac pulls into the driveway.

"Feel free to make yourself at home," he says to Maggie as he slips past her and makes his way down the porch steps, putting on a cheerful smile in the hope that doing so might allay some of the worry that fills Margaret's eyes when she spots her granddaughter's silver Mini Cooper parked beside their mailbox.

They instinctively reach out to each other, with him gently cupping her elbows and her grabbing onto his forearms. "What is it, Brian? Has something happened?" she asks, with trepidation both in her voice and in her eyes.

He shakes his head. "I'm not one hundred percent sure, sweetheart, but I don't think so. Maggie only just got here, but she seems more preoccupied than panicky if that helps."

Safe in the knowledge that no catastrophe has befallen her family, her grip on his forearms relaxes a little, and she lets out a small sigh of relief when he greets her with the words "Hello, beautiful", followed by a tender kiss against her temple. Tucking her windswept hair back behind her ear, he caresses her earlobe and tells her, "Look, I'll take care of the groceries. Go on, go and have a chat with your granddaughter."

She looks up at him with the softest smile, placing her hand over his heart and keeping it there as they take a couple of deep, calming breaths together. And with a quick nod, she hands him her car keys and quickly makes her way towards the house, to where her granddaughter is waiting patiently for her at the top of the porch steps.

\---

The groceries have all been put away and the freshly cut bouquet of blue forget-me-not flowers has been neatly arranged in a small glass vase in the center the dining table, but he lingers in the kitchen alongside Daisy for several more minutes until he hears the study door open. Though he can't quite make out the tail end of their conversation, eventually it is Margaret's voice that comes through the clearest when she tells Maggie in a slightly weary-sounding tone, "All right. Well then, I'll see you soon, my dear."

He hears Maggie putting her coat back on in the foyer and then exiting through the front door, and he takes that as his cue to begin making his way down the hallway. Back in the study, he finds Margaret sitting still and silent on the sofa, with one of the gray herringbone pillows in her lap, a nearly empty glass of water in her hands, and a faraway look in her eyes. He places a hand on her shoulder and gives her an amiable smile before wordlessly walking over to the bookcase bar cabinet in the far corner of the room.

"Would you like a refill?" he asks, uncorking the glass water carafe.

"I think I might need something a bit stronger, actually," she replies, more to herself than to him, as she runs a hand through her dark hair and keeps her gaze downcast.

If he had been a calm and steady presence up until this moment, her words now cause the smallest twinge of tension to take up residence in his shoulders, and he gets the distinct sense that this newly materialized discomfort will not be easing up anytime soon. He sets the carafe back down on the stainless steel tray and walks over to her. Kneeling down before her, he gently takes the highball glass from her hands and places it on the coffee table beside his coffee mug, and her blue-green eyes finally meet his again when he takes her hands in his, his thumbs soothingly caressing the backs of her hands.

She nervously chews her bottom lip, and he can feel her struggling to decelerate her breaths. He's trying to arrange the jumbled assortment of puzzle pieces of this afternoon into something resembling a coherent narrative when out of left field, a crushing and heavy sense of dread swiftly sinks like lead in the pit of his stomach. "What is it, sweetheart?" he asks, trying to keep the rising panic of his racing heart from affecting the evenness of his voice as he inches closer to her. "Are you . . . Oh God! Margaret, are you ill?"

Her somber expression changes almost immediately, and he can see that she's clearly touched by his concern from the way that the warmth radiates out from her smile. Shaking her head, she caresses his cheek with the back of her hand and presses a warm kiss to his other cheek, and the storms inside him begin to subside at that beautiful meeting of warm skin on warm skin.

"Oh my darling," she murmurs against his cheek, "it's nothing so dreadful as that. But I do need to go with Maggie to the hospital straight away."

The wave of relief that had just begun to wash over him rapidly recedes, and he finds himself pulling her into his arms and clinging to her like a life preserver upon the storm-tossed oceans, even as she touches her forehead to his and caresses his lips in that sublime way that she always does. "I'm fine, my darling. I'm okay. I promise," she reassures him. "But something has happened, and I don't . . . I don't know how to make sense of any of it yet."

Something about the way she looks at him in this moment causes every muscle in his neck to seize up. Lurking behind the deep sympathy is something else entirely—an unexpected element that gives her usually crystalline blue eyes a pale, watery complexion and sets him ill at ease.

_She's frightened._

Her voice is both small and timorous when she tells him, "He's come back to Arcadia, Brian."

In an instant, it feels like all of the oxygen has been sucked out of the room and everything within his chest is being pulverized. "Warren?" he asks. Just the sound of that name escaping his lips is enough to engulf him in an all-consuming rage.

"No, thank God!" she exclaims, placing her hands on his tense shoulders. "It isn't Warren, it's . . . "

Somehow, the weight of her words hits him long before the sound waves have carried them across the small divide that separates him from Margaret. In the deepest recesses of his heart, he has secretly dreaded the arrival of this day ever since their paths had crisscrossed again on that snowy night in the park last January. He has offered up his pleas to the star-filled skies over Arcadia every night since then, hoping against hope that Fate might never catch up to him and throw every one of his best-laid plans into her gyre. He feels completely powerless kneeling before his most entirely beloved Margaret now, seeing his own apprehension reflected back at him in her miraculously perfect features when he finally dares to look up at her.

The adrenaline surges through him, causing a painful, piercing ringing sensation in his ears, and everything around him seems to be disintegrating into the ether when she tells him, "It's Ben."

\---

He's lost track of the time.

Unsurprisingly, every attempt he's made over the last half hour to distract himself from the murky situation at hand has resulted in failure, with his mind inevitably wandering back to Margaret. He hadn't followed her after she'd dropped the bombshell about Ben's reappearance in Arcadia. In part because he'd simply been too stunned to move. But perhaps the real reason why he'd opted to return to the kitchen was because he couldn't fully trust himself not to let his emotions get the better of him. It would have only made an already less than ideal situation even worse, with his increasingly needling questions escalating into a full-blown interrogation as he stalked after her from room to room.

But now he's left with more questions than answers, with his insecurities slowly eating away at him and leading his mind down dark paths which are best left avoided. The knowledge that Margaret is just in the other room—so nearby, and yet so seemingly out of reach—and that she's changing out of her perfectly good work attire into something special to match the occasion and touching up her makeup for any man other than himself makes him want to slam his fists through the granite countertop and let out a few choice expletives.

Succumbing to the fatigue, he leans back against the kitchen counter and tries to focus what little energy he has left on calming his breathing. The uneasy silence is finally interrupted by the sound of her approaching footsteps, and his heart begins to pound even harder against his ribs. Though the feeling of being both breathless and speechless any time she enters the room isn't a new sensation for him, the reasons behind the pains in his chest are different this time. And unwelcome.

He tries to convince himself that Margaret is always the very picture of elegance no matter the time or place, but the ache in his hands from his ever tightening grip on the countertop betrays the veneer of calm that he's attempting to convey. She looks picture-perfect in her gray dress and black suede kitten heels, her perfect hair falling perfectly upon her perfect shoulders, and he tries not to implode from the sudden, irrational sting of jealousy that strikes when he sees the bracelet that is ornamenting her slender right wrist: snow white pearls on a thin silver chain. It had been a gift from her father for her eleventh birthday, but it had also been a gift from . . . _him_. 

She's so beautiful that he never wants to take his eyes off her, and yet he can't look at her without feeling like the world is teeter-tottering beneath his feet.

There's a jittery energy running through her that's so palpable he can feel it from all the way on the other side of the room, and it ratchets up in intensity when she nervously tucks her dark hair behind her ear in that endearing and irresistible way of hers. "I'm not sure what time I'll be back. Probably not until late," she begins. "I'll see you tonight."

That last part sounds far more like a question than a statement, and the uninvited element of uncertainty it brings causes his teeth to grind together when his jaw involuntarily clenches, sending hot daggers of pain shooting down his neck. He crosses his arms defensively, tearing his focus away from her before his displeasure can twist his gaze into a glare.

She cautiously makes her way over to where he's standing. He can feel her holding her breath the entire time, and he can feel the hesitation in her touch when she places her hands on his forearms and steps ever so slightly forward, attempting to close the chasm that has opened up so suddenly between them. Somehow, even through the rawness and disarray of his emotions, he can feel Margaret silently and desperately pleading with him, willing him to tenderly kiss her on the forehead the way he always does whenever she leaves the house. But as the seconds tick away into minutes, the swelling pain in her chest transfers into his own and grows deeper as he watches her spirit slowly being crushed. Her hands look as fragile as paper-thin leaves caught up in an arctic gale as they loosen their tenuous hold upon his still crossed forearms. The color drains from her face, and that tell-tale shade of turquoise seeps into her eyes, the realization dawning on her all at once that he remains unmoved in his determination to withhold this smallest measure of his affection from her.

In her soul-stirring blue eyes, the depth of her love for him runs as deep as the heartbreak he has wrought upon her, and the way that she looks at him in this moment leaves him thoroughly shaken.

Retreating from him, she wraps her arms around herself, as if to shield herself from his coldness. She nods in resignation through her shakily inhaled breath, wincing in pain as she turns away from him and hastily makes her exit, the sound of her footsteps growing so faint that she might as well be dissolving into thin air.

It is now that his fist finally makes contact with the hard granite, but the expletives he mutters under his breath are directed only at himself. _Goddammit, Addison! You really can be a fucking piece of shit sometimes!_

Scrubbing his hands over his face, all he can think about is how he's letting Margaret down by allowing his insecurities to run roughshod over his ability to be the best version of himself. She doesn't deserve this. She deserves the unfailingly kindhearted and steadfast gentleman he had promised her. Not this brooding, callous, possessive prick.

He looks at his wristwatch and his heart rate spikes. By now, Maggie will have already picked Jenny up from school and dropped her off at Elaine's restaurant for the evening. He only has a handful of minutes before she'll be back here to drive Margaret over to Arcadia General. The window of time he has to set things right is shrinking fast. He takes a deep breath and hurries towards the foyer.

Margaret comes back into his field of view, and his heart drops a little more with each approaching step. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion as he watches her clearly struggling to maintain her composure as she pulls on her coat and belts it tightly. The misfortunes of her former life may have taught her how to put on a brave face in order to mask her hurt feelings, but he knows her well enough to listen for the quivering in her shallow breaths. And when she takes her set of keys from the bowl on the console table, he notices how her lips tremble the longer her eyes linger on her house key. She holds it like it's the most precious thing in the world, a talisman that she will cling to as she sets forth on the lonely walk ahead.

Petrified with fear and oblivious to his increasing proximity, she startles when he whispers her name with the utmost gentleness and reverence, the weight of his whole existence carried within its perfectly paired syllables.

"I don't like it when you're angry with me, Brian. I hate it," she confesses, her voice so small and yet so heavily laced with sorrow. She continues to stare at the nickel-plated key in her hands, and her upright posture crumples under the crushing weight of her anguish. "Is it over between us?" she asks, the words barely able to escape through her stifled sob. "If I walk out this door now . . . is it over between us?"

He feels like he's been hit with a ton of bricks. Never in a million years would he ever dream of threatening her with such a ruinous ultimatum. How could any relationship—even one as strong as the one that he and Margaret have built together—ever truly recover from something like that? Had that really been the thought that had infiltrated and tormented her mind because he had refused to kiss her forehead only moments earlier? Because once, in an uncharacteristic outburst of anger and anguish, he had cruelly told her not to bother coming home?

Those noxious words echo in his ears now. With a contrite heart and his head bowed in supplication, he gently grasps her fingertips and tells her, "I never want it to be over between us."

She slowly turns to face him, but as soon as her glistening eyes meet his, they almost immediately fall away again. "I'm not trying to hurt you, Brian. I never want to hurt you. But I'm not going to change my mind about going, so please try . . . just try not to be mad at me for needing to do this. Don't hate me, okay? Please! Please don't hate me."

She's pleading with him, her voice sounding so completely broken that he can hardly bear the sound of it. He wants so much to touch her, to hold her beautiful face in his hands and kiss away all of her sad tears. Without any further words or delay, they finally come together.

"I could never hate you," he promises her, lifting her off the ground and fully into his embrace. "I know that I'm hurting you, and my God, I am so sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry," he whispers into her soft, fragrant hair. "I'm not mad at you, sweetheart. Honestly, I'm not. I know how important this is to you, and I really do hope that you find all the answers you've been looking for for so long. I know that I have to let you go. I'm trying to be okay with it, but I'm . . . I'm just not there yet. I'm sorry."

There's no response from her and he panics that he's careening wildly in the wrong direction, that he's running out of time to find the right words to say to her. With a heavy sigh, he buries his face in her neck and pushing his ego aside, he offers his heart to her—vulnerable, raw, and honest. "Please come home," he begs her.

At long last, her slender fingers curl into the hair at the nape of his neck and their bodies seemingly melt into each other. Her lips press warm kisses into his cheek, her mouth moving closer and closer to his ear so that he might hear her words—words she has only ever and will only ever say to him—loud and clear. "I love you, Brian. I am so in love with you. You're my guy," she reminds him, "and I'll always come home to you."

He's so overwhelmed by her that it renders him incapable of speech, and he can only nod in response. He nuzzles her neck before he slowly lowers her back down to the floor, and in the remaining minute that they have left together, he and Margaret remain entangled in each other's embrace, neither one of them ready to let the other one go quite yet.

But four o'clock inescapably arrives, and he knows that he really shouldn't keep Maggie waiting outside in the freezing cold. He tries to summon the strength to let Margaret go, even though what he really wants to do is fall to his knees before her, throw his arms around her like a petulant child, and tearfully beg her not to go. She looks at him with such affection, eyes innocent and wide, and his heart slowly shatters when he feels Margaret caressing his lips with a feather-light touch one last time.

"I have to go," she tells him, the sadness seeping back into her small voice. And then she's gently, but firmly pressing her hands into his chest to tear herself away from him before she loses her nerve. She slips out of his arms, and as the warmth of her body recedes from him, it dawns on him all at once that Margaret had just told him that she loves him.

_And he hadn't said it back. Or granted her that much sought-after kiss on her forehead._

He begins to take a step forward, his hand reaching out to her, the words "I love you" catching in his throat.

But it's too late.

He's too late.

His words die on the wind, and the silence of an empty house descends like a heavy curtain as the door closes behind her, the latch softly clicking into place.

He takes a few unsteady steps backwards, his knees giving out when he reaches the sofa. The soft leather swallows him up like quicksand, and the walls feel like they're closing in as the shadows grow longer in the dying afternoon light. The scent of her perfume and the warmth of her last kiss begin to fade away. She's gone, and he can't shake the feeling that he's lost the crucial first battle in a much bigger war.

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist:  
> 1\. Georgia by Vance Joy  
> 2\. The Sweetest Goodbye by Brian Douglas Phillips  
> 3\. When You Come Back Down by Nickel Creek


End file.
